Search

What are you waiting for? Who are you waiting for? Alone and solaced, I patiently saw you yesterday as the city was falling on top of me. While life was rushing towards me you were heading towards that meadow where everything is further and clearer.

Cuba is a country which has been narrated to the maximum. The poems, the essays, and the narratives have rummaged down to the core to bring out the best and worst of a nation, which in the process of trying to see itself has tried to be the belly of the world. Javier Negrin, a thirty year old who now lives in Isle of Pines has just awarded us with one of those rare jewels, a proposition so we do not lose ourselves. It is a book with five short stories, narrated at the velocity in which the youth lives, without make-up and without pretensions.

Even more, however, it is a book which is full of crude realism, the adoptive child of Charles Bukovsky and Pedro Juan Gutierrez. It is admired as a fiction, armed such as this one, which does not intend to go beyond its literary ancestors. YOTUEL, as a semantic game in the desperation of individuality, takes a chance on a documentary. It is the imagination which is seen as part of sub-world by any adolescent with a scholarship for second level grade school in any part of Cuba.

The five stories are threaded together through the incentive of some students who are careless, and abandoned by their parents in the midst of a socialist inferno which is the reality of the rural scholarships, where each individual, under the supposed Marti-idea of complementing Study-Work, cease being innocent when they discover a world of gangs, sexual and physical abuse, and psychological pressure in which they must establish themselves as people. But I swear that neither Negrin nor his characters say any of this.

This only appears in my grateful reader mind. A violation, or nearly- a group of hungry people- Tom Sawyer style or very near the story of “No Rest During That Summer” by Jose Manuel Prieto, who were surprised when they were stealing food which the granters of the scholarships were hiding from them. A fictional incest between the overprotective brother and his sister, an accident under the appearance of negligence, a love story- because if a book does not have a good love story then “it is crap”, as The Intellectual says about life, one of the characters of that book which has only 500 copies printed, which will get lost in the run down libraries of the province, despite the efforts of Ancoras Editions, or of the “Saiz Brothers” Association in Isle of Pines.

Assisting the presentation of YOTUEL was one of the best things that happened to me during the past Festivities of May. To relive the scholarships without the mandate of the literary generation of the 80’s, which the functionary-writer Abel Prieto is part of, as is the star-writer Senel Paz or the writer-writer Abilio Estevez, under the hand of the Placetas native Javier Negrin Ruiz, is quite a luck. This is a book which is very similar to the Testimony, that orphaned son of Cuban literature. The subject of scholarships in Cuba, which swarmed in areas like Jaguey Grande, Isle of Pines, and Zola, Matanzas, as well as Camaguey or San Andres in Holguin is something which History, Testimony, or Journalism should owe us for the future, when we become an adult nation. The children who traveled from Guantanamo to pick up their grapefruits in Gerona, or to prune oranges in the center of the country, were not better or worse. They were the youths who went off to kill and die in Africa, who left their bodies down in the Florida Straits or that awoke one day without the Berlin Wall. More than an idyllic encounter between little pioneers who loved their country, the “rural schools” were one of those infernos which many try to bury, and YOTUEL by Nergrin Ruiz revives it in halves, and that’s something to be grateful for. Everyone is invited to read.

This post was originally published on “Diario de Cuba” on April 30th, 2012. Here is the translation:

Photo taken from the internet

One can already hear the beating drum of the proletariat. Just a few work days away from the International Day of the Worker, the red machine of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has spent various weeks moving around its chains.

This time, the confirmation came from the voice and presence of Salvador Valdes Mesa, as the czar of the one and only official Union. The first vice president- Estaban Lazo- has accompanied him in his adventures through factories and institutions. But, who and what will they celebrate?

The indication of this year is that the state recruits and those who have wandered into the private sector will march “in a tight and uniformed block”. The support that the latter will give to the economic model of the island confirms that the wave of lay-offs, which the State decided to interrupt last minute, was worth it. In the blocks, we will see the unemployed, those who are nearly at that point, and those who see them like a mirror of what their lives could be in just a few months if the sacred economic lineaments go through.

The leading elite and the followers which will be in charge of carrying the country on their shoulders have received high level reprimands, under accusations of sparking re-unionism, idleness, and administrative corruption as an ill that is worse than even that of “counter-revolution”. At the same time, they are blamed for the economic inefficiency which Cuba suffers from, they are accused of not being at the high level of the working people. And that’s to everyone: victims and offenders. The slipping of the frontiers between the culprits has been and continues being the axis of revolutionary rhetoric- saying a lot without saying anything.

Ever since Monday, April 23rd, when the convocation occurred, the same actors as always have propped up throughout Cuban television screens: secretaries from the nucleus of the single Party in the national corporations, undaunted unionists, exemplary workers, and the general public which indefectibly support the massive parade in unconditional solidarity with the Marxist-Leninst postulates.

What has been left out of this performative act- pronouncements and promotions aside- have been the authors of the thousands of complaints which are being sent every single week to newspapers, radio stations, and other public spaces. It is difficult to believe (a show, after all) that Cuban workers march “in solidarity with millions of workers and citizens of countless countries who also march today demanding their fundamental rights to life and work with dignity”, without even blinking before the violations committed against them.

What is true is that no-one is awaiting spontaneous reactions against the rulers, but the operation of the restructuring of the labor force, the expulsions of those who have been deemed ‘non-suitable’, and the hundreds of workers from the tourism sector who have seen their months of labor being reduced due to the international economic crisis, among others, without a doubt conforms a good breeding ground.

Popular non-conformity towards the high taxes on the self-employment sector, the disorder of clients amid the elevated prices of agricultural products and other fundamental services, as well as the complaints of the incessant bustle of inspectors and bureaucrats in search of commissions or with absurd refusals amid any single process are all significant evaluators that May 1st will be a sincere and cynical act consisting of parts that are still unknown.

If, in reality, the thousands of unionists from the non-state sector, convoked now by the State, march in support of those who have closed the doors on them during half a century, they would be forging a new elite similar to that which sustains the nomenclature and it would be yet another act of apartheid against the attempts of independent unions- that black hole when it comes to citizen participation in contemporary Cuba.

More than five years ago, the Festivities of May stopped being my festivities. A political accident excluded me from a celebration which I ingeniously believed to be mine. Today I once again was able to take a peek at that gift which is to look at Cuba, and nearly touch her, with the lens.

Dissidents have taken these measures to protect their families from acts of repudiation and from State Security

It was Spring of 2005 when I read “The Others: Challenges of Reconciliation“, written by Juan Antonio Blanco. I remember having experimented with the sensation of having relocated myself once more. I felt that I was once again setting off my prow in regards to the hate and fears of the Cuba in which I live.

Seven years later, I am “the other one” in my neighborhood, in my local sugar-producing area, in this Eastern region.

I am looked upon as someone who wants to open the door to a Miami that wants to take everything away from Cubans. To “them”, I am helping to hand the country over to the Americans (schools, homes, children’s day cares, etc). That is how the propaganda machine of the ideological department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba paints us- yesterday under the direction of the ousted Carlos Aldana and today under former colonel Rolando Alfonso Borges. Under the most accomplice of silences, “they” have seen how they apply the Pre-Criminal Social Dangerousness Law, how they beat us, arbitrarily arrest us, surround our homes for various days and how we have to deal with rations of hate such as the “acts of repudiation”, public mockery, and absolute scorn for being “different”.

But “they” also suffer from the lack of information. They subject themselves to the abusive and humiliating migratory process known as the Exit Permit to be able to leave the country (or the one of being able to come in). They suffer hunger, lack of resources to live a “normal” life, and they have also lost hope. They have hit rock bottom just like “us”.

However, among “them” there are those who support us in silence. They print out copies of clandestine magazines for us, they lend us internet service, they bring us messages from the exterior and they risk their safety by keeping us in their homes…until they blow the whistle on them. “They” wait until tomorrow, “to see if this changes. It can’t be like this forever, brother…”

The most common arguments are that among “us” there is no leader, or that we are under the wing of Washington (Miami) and not of Moscow, Pekin, or Caracas. To “them” we are few, we do not have the support of the majority of the population, and our goals, in addition to being unfeasible, are annexationist, a sacrilegious voice in the centennial history of our coarse nationalism.

Without even noticing that we are like “them”, they accuse of being less intelligent, and “we” are the ones that have ideological (or political) problems and we are the ones that are crazy.

One question comes up in my mind often: Who has suffered more from fear of repression- “them” or “us”? However, it is not the monosyllable for an answer what is most enriching, but instead: What did each and every one of us do after the fist 10 seconds of terror?

My conclusion is that not even under magic spells would I prefer returning to be like “them”, to lower my head, to seal my lips, to remain silent, lower my hands, stop walking, and sell my future to “them”.

—

PS: Thanks to Particia, from Berlis, for her questions, tantrums and arguments about a week ago inspired me to write this post.

This blog has been a window for denouncements of the horros of Cuban prisons. In this photo: a former prisoner illustrates how guards apply the “Shakira” lock to punish inmates.

“Meñique Went out to Travel”– that’s the name of a famous children’s song. Those same travels were awarded to me by the combined forces of State Security (G-2) and the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) on April 28th. At 7:39 AM, Lieutenant Yasmani Suarez Ramirez showed up to my house along with FOUR other police agents to detain me. I was taken to the local police unit and, half an hour later, G2 Major Alberto Aberetis and Lieutenant Ignacio Wilson Mulet transferred me to the city of Holguin where I was interrogated in the G2 Operations Unit. The questions and offenses were the task of Major Jesus Jimenez Ballagas, who has been in charge of such an undesirable job for 6 years now. It was yet another interrogation, and yet another threat. They once again mentioned Law 88 (“The Gag Law”), they mentioned the 25 year sentence they once gave to Prospero Gainza Aguero during the Black Spring of 2003 and what it means at this moment. Although we know very well of what they are capable of, it’s always good to hear from the mouths of those who sustain the Castro machinery that they do not only lash out against 75, as they did on that occassion, but against any other who needs to be attacked. They’ll put them all in prison. Considering that they are phrases which the Granma newspaper does not publish, then it’s not bad that we make them public. That’s the will power for change which the ingenious say that the government of General-President RC practices. Amid those threats against human rights defenders is that they outline the excellent relationship between the current government, the Catholic hierarchy, and other elites which prowl about the corpse. There is no doubt that we are the non-conformists, those who, everyday, disrupt that happy union which has been established for 52 years.

The Official Letter of Warning handed to me was based on accusations against me for distributing false news about national and local events, for sending out information about prisons in Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, and Holguin, for participating in interviews made to me via phone from the other shores, for writing about the subject of the “re-structuring of the labor force” (a term which the government classifies as layoffs). I made my arguments clear to Major Ballagas, which were pretty much the following: Every citizen has the right to give their opinion about any subject which they desire, it is the leftist dictatorship of the Castro brothers which has amputated all information channels upon establishing a single press with sealed lips. Not even if they liberate all Cuban political prisoners will I stop informing about the Cuban prisons. In fact, more than 90% of my journalistic reports have to do with prisons and are stories of beatings, inhumane treatment, poor management of prisoner-functionary relations, and other violations committed by the Interior Order Functionaries, along with the re-educators and the Head of the Penitentiary Establishment Department who also go against the common prisoners. My denouncements are based on lack of medical attention in the prisons, the lack of drinkable water, the approval of the functionaries to allow prisons to become real concentration camps, and so on, highlighting many cases of self-infliction by prisoners.

This time, I did sign the Letter of Warning because, in it, it says what I expressed: that I will not stop informing about the Cuba I am interested in. I signed the letter because it says that, although I do not receive money for what I write, there are organizations and Cubans in “the exiles” that collaborate with me, making it possible for me to upload my articles on http://www.cruzarlasalambradas.com, and even when I give my reports to Radio Marti and/or Radio Republica, I do not receive pay for it. And the moral obligation to prepare myself each day to at least be minimally at the level of the studious commentators and renown academics who honor me, offer me a space which my own country refuses me as a simple citizen.

The reports which I provide every semester to the Partial Report of the Human Rights Secretariat of the Eastern Democratic Alliance are directly proven and confirmed by me, and I am responsible for them, both for the form in which I obtain the information and by the primary sources in which I base myself on to make them public. Although it may sound like a declaration of principles, it is more about being the voice for my brothers out on the street and in the prisons who risk themselves on a daily basis so that the world and Cuba know just how much individual and basic rights are being violated, and with how much impunity.

The same Letter of Warning constitutes a flagrant violation of citizen rights, so much so that no one is obliged to support it with their mouth closes, their hands tied back, and the fear eating them up inside.

On Tuesday, April 24th, I provided a lengthy interview to Amnesty International, in which I describe the vicissitudes of being an independent communicator, the violation of the phone lines which make ETECSA and the G2 the owners of our phones, along with the record of my latest detentions and the attacks which I have suffered at the hands of the political police during the past few months. And perhaps that was the real motivation behind this latest arrest, I dare to say. Even so, on Wednesday May 2nd, the interview with Amnesty will go public. There, you’ll be able to read more of what I said in the Pedernales Unit.